You know how sometimes in a library when you've already gotten far too many books and your arms are full you reach a point of abandon and just throw anything on the pile? That's what was happening to me when I plucked The Lesbian Body on down from the shelf because, I figured, I like lesbians and I like bodies. I thought it might come in handy at a certain time of night. From the cover and description ("a rhapsodic hymn to women's bodies and women's relationships") I guessed that it would probably be a little bit ridiculous and a little bit sentimental, which I have to say I think it was, but not in the way that I expected.

In the introduction, Wittig writes of "The desire to bring the real body violently to life in the words of the book (everything that is written exists), the desire to do violence by writing to the language which I (j/e) can enter only by force." The urgency with which she was writing and the impossible scale of what she considered her mission are affecting. In a certain mood, the excitement could be contagious. You could picture the author, flushed and frantically writing, trying to push language to its limits, as though if she could just be brave enough, bold enough, violent enough, the whole compromised world might come down and a new one come up in its place, the distance between the self and the desired finally transcended.

Unfortunately it seems that trying to amp up the language as much as possible ends up having the opposite effect and much of The Lesbian Body is repetitive and even boring. The language is so ceaselessly, insistently erotic that it becomes unerotic in its predictability. Here is a passage that I think is pretty representative: "Your hand followed by your arm have entered into m/y throat, you traverse m/y larynx, you arrive at m/y lungs, you itemize m/y organs, you make m/e die ten thousands deaths while I smile, you rip out m/y stomach, you tear m/y intestines, you project the uttermost fury into m/y body, I cry out but not from pain, I am overtaken seized hold of, I go over to you entirely, I explode the small units of my ego, I am threatened, I am desired by you. A tree shoots in m/y body, it moves it branches with extreme violence with extreme gentleness, or else it is a bush of burning thorns it tears the other side of m/u exposed muscles m/y insides m/y interiors, I am inhabited, I am not dreaming, I am penetrated by you, now I must struggle against bursting to retain m/y overall perception, I reassemble you in all m/y organs, I burst." There is something frustratingly literal about all of this.

Still, I ended up reading the whole thing although I didn't expect to. There were moments when sudden unexpected images were really arresting, and then the rawness of it did, I think, add to the impact. But I would have to disagree with the jacket blurb "the art and the courage are of the highest level." I couldn't really speak to the courage without sounding, maybe, ungrateful and inconsiderate. Perhaps it's that The Lesbian Body did its work so well that the message seems a little tired to us today. I certainly imagine it was fresher in the climate in which it was originally published. As far as the level of the art, well, I think it's pretty clear that aesthetic considerations weren't the writer's primary concern. I have to say, a little bit apologetically yet, that, though I admire them in a way, strength of feeling and rawness aren't enough to trump aesthetic merit. All the same, I found myself reaching for this book at a time of night that I wasn't exactly reaching for the Henry James, so it did offer both pleasures and merits not always found in works that might be aesthetically better. ( )

http://kevinbenham.blogspot.com/2007/03/monique-wittigs-lesbian-body.html ( )